The blog of a chug-a-long angler enjoying his life at the water side…

No Fishing – Not A Command But Has Been My Status For A While….

It’s now March 15th – the first day of the closed river fishing season – so I’ll be unable to fish flowing water until the season re-opens on June 16th. It used to be like that for all waters including pools and canals but sometime between my stopping fishing in the late 80’s and restarting in January 2011 the laws changed and now stillwaters are generally legally fishable all year round – although there are exceptions which are (a) waters that have a SSI classification (Site of Scientific Interest) and (b) waters that the owners of apply their own close seasons to (eg National Trust owned waters and some club waters mainly).

Anyway, I didn’t get out to have a last river session due to other things happening. Replaced the car and now have a Ford Galaxy which has tons of space for the tackle, and camping gear too – the Volvo V40 estate was starting to be lacking in capacity even with a roof box besides costing a lot in maintenance, etc too. Been looking into pre-paid funeral plans – cost of dying is increasing at 6% per annum for the past few years – and now councils are increasing cremation costs above that even now – so makes sense to pay at today’s prices and hopefully receive the services many years ahead when prices are double the paid amount. Also in middle of kitchen redecoration – taking down old wallpaper and burning off old ceiling paint – wallpaper OK but ceiling is hard going and not helped by working over head height. I have to use a heat gun rather than paint stripper which would have possibly been better, but I worked in the paint industry for a few years and became super-sensitised to strippers meaning that I get one drop on my skin and it blisters, bursts, blisters, bursts, blisters, etc – and generally I lose 1/16″-1/8″ depth of flesh off the affected area and it goes red and weeping…

However, today I sorted my tackle out and I’m now planning a visit to a local day ticket pool on Monday. The pool was closed to fishing in 1987 (was a trout fishing pool at that time) and has only just been re-opened as a coarse fishing pool. The stock of the pool is still to be ascertained but plenty of perch and roach and at least one 10lb+ pike has been caught there so far. Anyway, having a rest from the pike despite there only being two weeks of ‘personal’ pike season left (no legal close season but I only pike fish October 1st to March 31st for personal reasons) and intend to target the perch population mainly – so tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be sorting out baits which will include digging worms (a premier perch bait), and will also be taking dead maggots, prawns and mussels. And probably also take bread and processed meat (luncheon/bacon grill/chopped ham with pork type). Also a good selection of flavour dips (bloodworm, chopped worm, monster crab, strawberry, etc).

Planning on fishing the float, at least initially, but will also take my 2 leger rods and rodpod/bobbins/alarms to change to if I fancy, or need, to.

Also planning on making a new batch of cheesepaste up tomorrow, ready for the new river season in June. Basically, the standard mix consists of shortcrust pastry with extra mature cheddar plus parmesan plus danish blue/stilton/similar with a small amount of marge/spread to ensure it remains soft in cold waters but I’ll also make a few flavoured variants too – (a) with Marmite (b) with tumeric (c) with chilli. I’ll also create different coloured versions of some of those (yellow/red/green).

So that’s the and of this entry to the blog and hopefully the next entry will be made on the evening of Monday 17th on my return – but if not then asap afterwards.

Just hoping for a catch, no matter how big or small!! Had 12 blanks in succession as documented in the previous entries – and could do without making it as baker’s dozen or unlucky 13!!